Punctuality continues to improve on many Greater Anglia rail routes

Punctuality across the Greater Anglia network was better than the national average last month, with over nine out of ten trains running on time.

Passengers on some Greater Anglia rail lines saw even better results, with well over 90% of their services running on schedule between the 3 February and 2 March 2019, continuing an upward trend in punctuality since the beginning of the year.

The best performance was achieved on the Marks Tey - Sudbury branch line, with 97.6% of trains on time, the Norwich to Lowestoft line with 94.9%, Norwich to Great Yarmouth, 94.8%, Norwich to Sheringham, 92.9%, London to Southend / Southminster, 92.6% and London to Colchester / Clacton-on-Sea / Walton-on-the-Naze with 92.0%.

Punctuality for the whole Greater Anglia network was 90.5% this period, better than the national figure of 89.1%.

Jamie Burles, Managing Director, Greater Anglia, said: “We are pleased to see performance continue to improve for another month, as we know how important a consistent, reliable service is for our customers.

“Our aim now is to provide better punctuality more consistently across the whole network and we have invested over £20 million to date in a fleet reliability programme to help achieve this target.

“In addition, Network Rail is focusing on reducing the most disruptive track, signal and overhead line faults, removing temporary speed restrictions and getting the railway running back to normal more quickly when delays do occur. They are also investing significant sums to improve the medium and longer term reliability of the rail infrastructure in our region.”

“The introduction of our brand-new fleet of trains will also help to make the service more resilient, as the current eight different types of train will be replaced with just three types, making them easier to maintain.”

Meliha Duymaz, Route Managing Director for Network Rail Anglia, said: “Getting passengers to where they need to be on time is what we’re here to do, day in, day out.

“The last few months has seen punctuality improve, and this has been achieved with our train operator partners by managing the basic causes of delay through our performance campaign - Every Second Counts. This programme of structured improvements which has been running for the past three months is relentlessly focused on the most common causes of delay and driving them down through clear and practical actions.

“Furthermore, looking into the future, we're working hard to improve the railway for everyone on the Anglia route by investing £2.2bn over the next five years.”

Six of Greater Anglia’s lines now also have annual average performance figures of over 90% - Marks Tey to Sudbury at 95.8%, Norwich to Sheringham at 94.0%, Norwich to Lowestoft at 93.8%, Norwich to Great Yarmouth at 92.9%, London to Colchester Harwich at 92.5% and London to Southend Victoria at 90.7%.

Overall annual average punctuality across Greater Anglia was 87.7% – higher than the national average of 86.1%.

The train operator is aiming to raise that figure to 90% and then 93% by the end of its franchise.